The Oxford Book of American Det (79 page)

As we got into our car and drove out of Lanesburg, the crowd was circulating a petition to the Governor to pardon Mrs. Cordelia Cancy of the minor crime of forgery.

The petition set forth Mrs. Cancy’s charity, her purity of heart, her generosity in using the proceeds of her crime for the church, and a number of her other neighbourly virtues. The village lawyer put in a note that a wife cannot forge her husband’s signature. He argued that if she cannot steal from him, then she cannot forge his name, which is a form of theft. She simply signs his name for him, she does not forge it.

The petition was signed by two hundred and forty-three registered Democratic voters.

The Governor of Tennessee is a Democrat.

At this point we drove out of Lanesburg . . .

WILLIAM CAMPBELL GAULT (b. 1910)

William Campbell Gault epitomised the professional practitioner of the detective and suspense genre through the middle years of the twentieth century. Gault started young, winning a $50 prize for a short story when he was sixteen and making the slim living typical of the business by the time he was nineteen. He was a product of the hard-working middle class, augmenting his writing income by cutting leather in a shoe factory, helping his mother manage a hotel, and, after army service during World War II, working for Douglas Aircraft and the U.S. Postal Service.

Typical of the times and the trade, Gault was versatile and prolific. In the decade and a half during which the magazine fiction market flowered, he sold more than 300 short stories to the sport, science-fiction, and mystery pulps. When television killed the magazine market in the early 1950’s, he turned to writing novels for the paperback original and hardcover markets. In 1952, three of his novels were published, and one
(Don’t Cry for Me)
won an Edgar award from the Mystery Writers of America.

Gault’s work moved forward from the hard-boiled private-eye fiction of the period.

His books had a moral purpose. They challenged racial, class, and ethnic stereotypes and won for him the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Private Eye Writers of America.

Gault’s most memorable contribution to the advancement of the genre was his development of Brock Callahan, the series character of his later books, as a fully developed personality with a biography that explains his character and his motives and gives these books a special depth. His most significant achievement was his championing of the disadvantaged and his unusual (for his day) respect for females.

Gault also pursued a serious career as a writer of sports fiction for the juvenile market.

As such, he was concerned with fair play, and he became adept at portraying relationships between males of all ages, especially boys and teenagers.

In
See No Evil,
Gault has a young man puzzle out the truth behind a crime while struggling to exonerate his kid brother. This story is an important example of a pulp writer dealing with issues of race and setting the stage for later genre writers who would use their tales to deal with social issues.

See No Evil

At breakfast, there was the story again, in the papers. I looked over at my brother, and saw his eyes on me. Big, brown eyes, Manuel’s got, and a quick smile, and his brain is quick, too.

“Where were you last night, Manny?” I said.

“Out. Riding the heap around.”

The heap is a ‘36 V8 with a cut-down solid top and two pots. With a Turbo head and Johannsen ignition. Too much car for any punk, but he’d built it. It had cost him many a skinned knuckle, and I couldn’t say much about that.

“Around Pico, were you riding?” I asked him.

“Some. What’s bothering you, Pete?”

“Kids bother me,” I said. “Kids that got a grudge on the world. Kids that ride hot rods around, looking for trouble. In Pico, last night, seven of them beat up a guy; beat up one guy. They held his wife, while she watched. His sister had her baby with her and she ran away, but she fell in running away, and the baby’s condition is critical. The man has a broken jaw and he lost three teeth and his back has been cut in seven places. It’s all here in the paper, Manny.”

“So? You don’t have to read it, do you? You could read the sport page. Who’s asking you to read it?”

“The kids were dark with brown eyes. Mexican kids, maybe.”

“Maybe they’re mad at the world, Pete. Maybe they figure they’re not getting the break the gringos get.”

“And that’s the way to get a break, beating up strangers with tire irons?”

“I don’t know, Pete. What’s it to me?”

“I don’t know. But this I know. If I thought you were one of them, I’d kill you where you sit.”

“Would you? Who’s mad now, Pete? What kind of talk is that?” Mama had gone next door, to Sanchez’s to borrow some eggs. Now she said, “That’s what I’d like to know. What kind of talk is that, Peter Montello? Why don’t you lay off Manuel? He’s a good boy.”

“He’d better stay a good boy,” I said. “Where does he get his spending money?”

“There’s ways of making a buck,” Manny said. “I don’t have to punch a time clock to make a buck.”

“You had a black eye last week. Get that making a buck?”

“Maybe.”

Mama said, “Peter, it’s time for work. Never mind about it, Peter.”

“Who’s the man around here?” I asked her. “Me or him?”

“What does it matter who’s the man?” Mama answered. “I’m the boss. Here’s your lunch, Peter.”

I stood up and picked up my lunch. I looked at my brother. “You remember what I said.”

“Which part?”

“And don’t get flip.” I got out before he gave me an answer to that.

Ah, he’s all right. What kind of a break did he get, Papa dying when he was in seventh grade? High school, Manny had, but how could I send him farther, wrestling freight for Arnold’s Cartage? He’s a bright kid, and should have gone to college.

But hot rods. Hot rod hoodlums now, running around like maniacs, insulting people, beating them. Wolf packs, some of the papers called them, and the sheriff was adding more deputies.

It was a hot, heavy day and I wore a pair of gloves to rags. Handling sole leather, and it cuts you all to hell.

Gina was sitting on her front porch when I went by on the way home, and I came up.

She gave me a glass of lemonade.

“When we’re married,” she said, “I’ll have a glass of it ready for you every night when you come home from work. I’ll have a pitcher of it.”

“When we’re married—that’s good,” I said.

Her eyes are too soft for this world. She bruises too easy. “Why do you talk like that?” she asked me.

“When are we going to get married? What’s wrong with a fact? What have you got against a fact?”

“What have you got against the world lately? Grouchy, grouchy, grouchy all the time.

Tell me why should I love a grouch?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know.”

“Oh, but I do, Peter,” she said, and her soft hand stroked my cheek. “Oh, we won’t fight. You’ve had a bad day.”

“And Manny,” I said.

“Now what?”

“These hoodlums, these hot rod hoodlums. Manny’s got a hot rod.”

“So?”

“And he had a black eye the other day.”

She shook her head and looked at me with the soft eyes, like Manny’s. “You’re always hunting trouble, like those hoodlums. You don’t know Manny’s one, but you’ve got to think he is. Why do you always want to think bad?”

“I don’t know. He’s so—smart.”

“You should be proud he is, not resentful. He’s never given you any trouble.” Her brother Christy came up on the porch and poured himself a glass of lemonade.

“Hi, Pete, how’s the feet?”

Short and broad and perfect teeth. Was a fullback at Fullerton High, but no college made an offer.

I asked him, “Were you with Manny last night?”

“That’s a good question,” he said. “I forget. Ask Manny.” I reached over to grab him by the shirt, but Gina was quicker, and between us. “Peter, for heaven’s sakes!” she said. “You’re like a wild man.” Christy was looking at me, and his eyes were shiny and his mouth working. Both his fists were clenched.

I could have crushed him with one hand. I went past them and down the steps. I went home, and got in the shower Manny had put in the back yard.

Lots of things around here Manny had fixed up. He was handy with tools. And with tire irons?

Manuel. Manuel, my baby brother. When he was three, I was twelve, and watching him all the time, because I wanted to. Smart, always smart and quick and smiling.

About eight, Gina came over. She said, “You forgot your lunch bucket.” She had it in her hand.

“I’m sorry, Gina,” I said. “I feel better now.”

“I thought you would. Let’s go to the park. There’s a concert tonight.” We sat on the grass, where it’s free. Ortiz had a big voice, and you could sit in Palos Verdes and hear him. A poor man’s singer, he must be; you can hear him in the cheap seats. What a voice, what a man.

I held Gina’s hand and forgot about her brother. I almost forgot about Manny. Where had he been at suppertime?

Next morning, there were no new troubles in the paper. But the sheriff said there was a possibility the increase in housebreaking might be tied up with these hoodlum gangs.

The city police were inclined to agree.

Manny was reading the sport page.

“Why weren’t you here for supper?” I asked him.

“Wasn’t hungry.”

“Look at me when I talk to you.”

He put the paper down.

“Did you call Ma that you wouldn’t be here for supper?” He nodded. “She knew about it.”

She came from the kitchen with more pancakes. “Now what?”

“Nothing.”

“Punching the clock, that’s what’s the matter with him,” Manny said. “If you don’t like it, why don’t you quit, Pete?”

“And how would you two eat, then?”

“We’d find a way. We don’t want to be a burden, Pete.” He was grinning at me, that smart grin.

“Be quiet, both of you,” Mama said. “I don’t want another word out of you two this morning.”

Another hot day. Loading refrigerators. The guys you get to work with these days, you might as well be alone. At noon, I sat near the north door, in the shade, with my lunch and the paper.

The voice was Shultz’s. Big, round guy with a round head. Thinks he’s the original Atlas.

“It’s these damned Spanish-Americans, they like to be called. Most of these punks got Mex names, you notice? Manuel, or Leon, or—“

“Or Shultz,” I called over.

“That’s one of them,” he told his buddies. “If I had my way—“ I was up and walking over there now. “What would you do, cabbage-head?” I asked him quietly.

“I’d shoot every one of those punks,” he told me. “Beating up innocent people, scaring women into hysterics.”

“You’ve got a big mouth, Shultz,” I told him. “If you worked like you talked, we’d all be laid off.”

He stood up, his face red. He rubbed his big hands on his cotton pants, looking me over. “Fight?” he said. “You want to fight, Mex?”

I nodded, and he came in.

He came in with a right hand I should have ducked, but didn’t. It hit next to the ear and put me down. I saw his foot coming for my jaw as I scrambled on the concrete, and I twisted clear of it.

I was on my feet when he closed again. I put a fine left deep into his belly, and heard him grunt. His head crashed my mouth, and the blood spurted.

I caught him on the nose with a wild left, and he paused for maybe a second. My right caught his left eye.

He started one from the floor, and I beat him to it. It was a button shot, and I hit him twice more while he was falling.

His buddies were still sitting there. One of them said, “Don’t get us wrong, Pete. We didn’t ask him to sit with us. Sit down, Pete.”

“It’s cooler over here,” I said.

It had been all right while it lasted, but it didn’t do any good now. My hands trembled and I couldn’t eat my lunch, and I was sick of myself. Hating wasn’t any good; fighting wasn’t any good. Why was I like this?

Gina was on the porch again. Mrs. Sanchez was there too, but not Christy.

Gina looked at my swollen lip, and her big eyes asked questions.

“Got caught by a packing case,” I said. “Lucky it didn’t tear my head off.” Mrs. Sanchez rocked in her rocker, saying nothing.

“Peter, poor Peter,” Gina said.

“I’m all right,” I said. “I’m no poorer than the rest in this block.” Mrs. Sanchez sighed, and said nothing.

“It must be hot in that warehouse,” Gina said. “Should I make some lemonade?”

“Not today, not with this lip,” I said. “I’ll see you later.”

“Tonight?”

“Sure. I suppose.”

What was there in it? I could sit on her porch the rest of my life. Five years I’d been going with her and not a dime nearer to the priest. What was there in it? Pa hadn’t left anything and Manny wasn’t good for anything. I had Mama to take care of.

Manny was home for supper that evening. We didn’t have any words for each other.

“Some home,” Mama said. “Brothers not talking to each other.” Manny grinned. “He’ll grow up some day, Ma. He was always the baby.” I looked at him and said nothing.

“Forget to duck?” he asked me.

Mama said, “It was a packing case. Peter is not street brawler, Manuel.”

“Oh,” Manny said, that smart way.

I asked him, “Don’t you believe it?”

“Sure. If you say it. You wouldn’t lie, Pete.”

Red, things got, and I could feel his steady brown eyes on me. But I remembered Shultz, and how I’d felt after that.

“And if I did fight,” I said, “I wouldn’t use a tire iron. And I wouldn’t need a gang.” Manny said quietly, “What the hell do I care what you’d do? You think you’re some kind of an example?”

His eyes were burning; I’d never seen him this way before. He was breathing heavy; you could see his chest going in and out.

“Manuel—“ Mama said warningly.

“Well, tell him to lay off of me, then! Picking, picking, picking all the time! I—“ He got up and went out of the dining room.

The front door slammed.

Mama was shaking her head. “Peter, Peter, Peter—what is it? He’s just a boy.”

“He’s old enough to work. I was working at his age.” She looked at the tablecloth. She was crying.